I’m not here trying to start an argument or behave like an asshole, but to me this sounds like completely backwards thinking. It’s like saying that the purpose of driving your car is to accumulate mileage and burn gas. It’s not. The purpose of driving is to get from point A to point B, and the purpose of training is to stimulate hypertrophy and strength adaptations.
You guys should look at Chris Beardsley’s Instagram posts, he has a lot of stuff relating to this and more.
I’m no power lifter. I know the theories and suggested rest times for certain things, but they don’t apply to my training (for the most part).
@MarkKO’s log is the closest I’ve followed anyone’s power lifting training. He doesn’t seem to rest long and it seems to be working.
I know that I’ve always read that longer rest is necessary when training for strength because the nervous system needs to recover. That seems to apply when sets 2, 3, and so on need to be as good as set 1 in terms of performance. But that also seems different than Mark’s training.
I’m not here to argue one way or the other, but Mark’s training seems to be working.
@Frank_C @chris_ottawa this is an awesome discussion.
In terms of the fatigue, the fatigue we accumulate is the fuel for our progress. Without it, it is much harder to force our bodies to adapt. So while it may appear backwards, our goal is to generate enough fatigue to force our bodies to adapt while controlling that fatigue so it doesn’t result in injuries.
In respect of progressively overloading weights, this is something we don’t really do at all because we use other means to generate fatigue. Primarily, we use volume. The way Greg explains his system is that we practice technique over and over to make it automatic, and for this we don’t need to progress weight; we force adaptation by accumulating fatigue, to do which we also don’t need to progress weight providing we keep the volume high enough. In addition to keeping the volume high, we use techniques such as very short rests between sets (five to 15 seconds) with light weights which also allows us to simulate straining with maximal effort; AMRAP sets with moderate weight; and AFSAP targets with heavier weights.
It is absolutely possible to get great results by progressively adding weight, of course. We all know this. What I’ve learned from Greg is that it also is not at all necessary. I’m not just talking about my results. The majority of people on the team, and this is well over 100 people by now, are seeing as good progress as I have been or better. We also see few injuries.
Now, my own takeaway from this is that both Greg’s way and the overload way work but there are some important differences.
Firstly, Greg’s approach is, in the gym, supremely unrewarding. All you get is fatigue. After a while, something like nine months to a year, it just becomes normal. You go in, spend a lot of the time wanting to quit, go out, repeat. Except come meet day nothing stops you because frankly, even a bad meet day is easy compared to training. Secondly, Greg’s approach is mentally very easy in one aspect. You never have to worry about the weights getting heavier, or having to hit rep PRs or anything. All your job is, is to do the work as best you can and accept that the deeper into accumulation you are, the worse your numbers will likely get and just focus on executing each rep as close to perfectly as you can. Thirdly, if you aren’t willing to eat and sleep to recover, you will really struggle. It isn’t a system for someone who wants to maintain a certain look while powerlifting, or who isn’t prepared to foot the food bill and make the effort to eat more. The system is based around getting very good technically and building a large quantity of muscle and connective tissue strength to withstand the weights.
My experience of progressive overload systems is that they focus on increasing training loads, quite frequently at the expense of volume and muscle building. Because the focus is on adding weight in training, volume is sacrificed. That means less practicing technique, and less assistance work to build muscle. We lose two incredibly important things this way. It also seems like most of the progressive overload systems add weight much too quickly. Look at 531, the archetypal slow and steady progression program: every three week cycle, you add five to 10 pounds to your training max. For most people, that is between a one and three per cent increase, which is a LOT in three weeks. Over a year, that is somewhere around between a 12 and 36 per cent increase in training max. Compared to a system like Greg’s, where your training max goes up twice a year, after a meet, and the increase is determined by your meet results. Generally, we see an increase of around five per cent on each lift in a meet cycle. So our working max goes up by a similar amount. What I find most interesting here is that as far as I’m aware, most progressive overload systems ALSO aim for something close to five per cent on a lift each meet. So I end up asking myself, why would I bother with the added risk and stress of progressively increasing my training loads when in the end, I can get much the same result without doing so.
Now, if we start to look at the psychological aspect, which I am much less knowledgeable about, even Greg acknowledges that many people need to feel they are making progress in training. So, in that respect, I can absolutely see the value in progressively adding more weight in training. It makes the athlete feel good. Greg’s solution is the implementation of AMRAP sets and AFSAP targets: we still get the opportunity to satisfy our need to improve in training should we so desire, without the risk of increasing load. What is interesting is that those of us on the team with over a year or so under our belts tend to not chase rep PRs. If we can get everything in one set, great. If not, it doesn’t matter. If we can set a rep PR without grinding too much, great. If not, who cares?
It really just seems to me when comparing the two, Greg’s approach takes much of the risk out of the equation, as well as the guesswork. If I add weight over a block, and as the block progresses the weights feel heavier, is it that they are heavier or is it fatigue? Do I wait until I can’t hit my reps or tweak something to find out? What do I do then? Reset my loads? Take a step back? Why not just use a rotation of the same loads and use volume to generate fatigue? Then when things start to feel heavy, I KNOW it’s fatigue and because I have regular deloads scheduled, I don’t have to worry. On a day to day basis the biggest choices I have to make are what weight to use for my assistance work.
In the end I’ll get much the same result, so why not take the less risky option?
Todays training
Because I start peaking next week, working max for this week drops to 75%. Greg introduced this not long after my last peak
30 seconds each side of
Couch stretch
Pigeon stretch
Supine twist
Hurdler stretch
10 bracing hip thrusts
Squat
Worked up to 8x385 lbs, Phantom wraps somewhat prestretched at six revolutions - the rebound on these is pretty insane. It felt like I had maybe 275 lbs on my back, and on the video I basically bounce up and down the whole set. The support is very good too.
Squat, first rep paused for five seconds
2x6x286 lbs
Band good mornings
55, light band as what is now standard
Seated row
4x10x154 lbs
One hour
You know, after reading all this, I think I found the question for the research study - is fatigue/effort/strain through short rests (like Panora’s system) the same as the effort/strain experienced under the more traditional training (higher loads, longer rests)?
I wonder if the body notices the accumulated fatigue in your training or if it just knows it’s needing all hands on deck to move the weight. And if it’s only the latter then you’re doing the same thing with a presumably lowered risk of injury.
Someone call Brad Schoenfeld!
Check out some info on Rest/Pause vs straight sets and cluster reps vs straight sets.
Just because something works doesn’t mean that it’s the best way to go. Suboptimal doesn’t mean worthless, it means that there is a better way to do it.
Also the ATP/CP energy system. If performance is decreased beyond a certain point due to fatigue then you won’t recruit the largest, strongest motor units. Those are also the ones that have the most growth potential. So it doesn’t mean you will get zero gains, you will just get less than you would have with a more efficient approach and in many cases you will end up doing a bunch of extra work for nothing.
I’m glad you think so, I was worried it would turn into a heated argument.
OK, that sounds like something directly from Boris Sheiko, if you are familiar with his style of training there is no progressive overload within training cycles, only after you compete or test maxes do you increase working weights. So if your max went up by 10% then your main work sets which are mostly between 70-80% would increase proportionally. Can’t say that it doesn’t work, but it might not be the bet approach for everyone all the time. Also note that the Sheiko AI will calculate loads based on RPE and such, when you are too far from failure the training effect is much smaller.
Well, you have a point but if right now you need more muscle than anything then the focus should be on that rather than heavy low rep work. If the program/system cant accommodate for that then something is wrong, and it isn’t necessarily due to progressive overload. Right now there is a lot of research and such into training for hypertrophy and the one thing that all the experts agree on is that you need progressive overload to build muscle.
The question is whether you really would get the same result. Different people respond to different things, but it seems that pushing close to failure (4 reps or less in reserve) is the most efficient way to gain both muscle and strength for most people.
Yeah, that’s a large part of what keeps me motivated.
That’s what I started doing, add weight each week for my top sets and when the reps drop off too much then lower the weight again and increase the reps. Seems to be working. I actually got the idea from some of John Kuc’s articles. He said that he had to quit using PEDs and lose a bunch of weight because of health issues, with drugs he was making linear progress (mostly doing singles too) and when it would slow down he would increase dosages and take more stuff. Without the drugs, progress and recovery was much more unpredictable so he started doing a wave approach with mostly sets of 2-4 reps.
For emphasis:
So in other words, not all hands can make it on deck because they are tired and lazy. There is research on this topic, I’m not making it up. Look at Chris Beardsley’s Instagram and read through the posts.
I’m not arguing because I don’t know enough to do so, but if the bigger muscles are already fatigued and slacking off, then isn’t that success? Isn’t the goal to fatigue them to the point where they adapt?
Are you talking about strength gains or hypertrophy gains?
If you have 10 deckhands, and do a set the 6 or 7 strongest deckhands do the work. Then they rest and those same deckhands come back out to do the next set. 3 or 4 deckhands do nothing. So 3-4 of your deckhands go untrained and unimproved.
If you rest less the strongest deckhands will have to sit out, and the 3-4 slackers will be forced to work.
That way all 10 of your deckhands can be trained and improve.
Its not individual muscles, it’s muscle fibres within the muscle. Each motor unit controls a group of fibres. If they aren’t activated then they receive no training effect. So not resting enough between sets can cause this, as well as doing too much volume.
both
The problem is that the strong ones are the real slackers, they won’t do anything unless they absolutely have to.
This is how I’ve always understood it. The body has fibers that are always willing to do the work while others get to slack off. That’s why going to legit failure is necessary from time to time.
This actually confuses me for the power lifting application. We need to rest so they can do the work, but they’re the last fibers to show up. So how do you get them to pull their weight without fatiguing the others first? Can this be done with submax work? Do higher reps, fatigue the little guys, then increase the intensity (weight) and do some low rep sets under fatigue?
Once you are lifting 80% or more, or are less than 5 reps from failure, then supposedly all muscle fibres are recruited. That’s where you get this idea of “effective reps”, and pushing to failure will give you more of them but the last rep or two cause more fatigue than the rest of the set so its a trade off. Basically, it’s not so black and white, but a “high degree of effort” is required in one form or another to get better. And too much fatigue limits how much effort can be put forth.
Pre-fatiguing doesn’t make sense if strength is the goal. But basically you either lift 80% or more for work sets, push close to failure, or lift lighter weights but put maximum force into each rep (CAT/compensatory acceleration training). And again, how fatigued you are at the moment will affect how much you actually get out of it, if you do one rep with 80% and you almost die then you only got one rep worth of stimulation while if you were less fatigued you could have got several with a similar amount of fatigue per set.
Woke at 268 lbs, looking pretty similar to yesterday if perhaps a tad less bloated.
Great discussion guys. Thanks for taking the time to write your thoughts
Really enjoyable and thought provoking discussion.
Isometrics are supposed to recruit more fibers than lifting, you can push/pull to the max without worrying about weights or failing.
Some guys talk about post activation potentiation, or going heavy then fast to trick your brain into using more motor units.
It’s almost like you can either have high volume, high intensity or high frequency and get great results but not combine them all to be high. Oh, wait…
Seriously though, when you look at it the successful systems all manipulate those three parameters and seem to end up focusing on one to a much greater extent than the others.
The way Greg tells it, he’s massively influenced by the Russian approach but you can also tell he’s using stuff he learned at Westside. When you break it down, it ends up as main lifts for technique, supplemental and assistance for muscle growth. We don’t progress weights, rather we progressively accumulate fatigue. Volume is really quite high, but frequency and intensity are low for the main and supplemental lifts; while for assistance volume is moderate to high, frequency is pretty high and intensity is low.
Then you look at the progressive overload approaches and for the main lifts intensity is quite high, volume is quite low and frequency can be moderate and sometimes high; but assistance volume is comparatively low, frequency and intensity moderate.
Providing you manage recovery and fatigue, both will work really well. It just seems to be easier to do this when you take out progressively overloading the weight.
Who’d have thought it, you can get equally good results training in different ways…
I’m simple so I like to simplify things. From my very little reading, I’ve taken home that the 3 main factors when programming are; frequency, volume and intensity. It seems every one agrees these have to be balanced. Would it be fair to say only one can be high, another moderate and the remainder low, in what ever combination?